Washington, D. C.: An Office profile;

Page 1

Washington, D.C., or "The District" as residents often refer to it, is a unique
American city. It owes its existence directly to the American Revolution, for
had there been no revolution, there would be no Washington. An act of Con­gress
on July 16, 1790 directed that a site not larger than ten miles square on
the densely wooded banks of the Potomac River be developed as the perma­nent
seat of the government of the United States. In 1791, a French military
engineer, Major Pierre Charles LEnfant, drew a comprehensive plan for the
city under the direction of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
As James Sterling Young observed in
The Washington Community — 1800-
1828, "Militarily indefensible and eco­nomically
unproductive, the community
(Washington, D.C.) was intended, in
short, to be a dependent community,
not self-directing, without the means to
control its own destiny. The wide-ranging
avenues which sweep outward
from the interior foci of the community
plan thus assume importance as the
community's intended lifelines, and
suggest that the very survival of the
occupant institution was meant to be
conditioned upon open and free inter­action
with the outlying society. They
reflect, too, an extraordinary effort to
inculcate in the community members a
sense of this dependence — to instill
in them, as LEnfant expressed it,
'grand and far-distant points of view'"
In 1800, Washington had a population
of approximately 14,000, two main
thoroughfares which were essentially
dirt roads, and a suburb called George­town
which Abigail Adams thought
"a dirty little hole." Congress first con­vened
in Washington on November 21
of that year.
During the War of 1812 with Great
Britain, most of the public buildings
that had been erected were burned
by a British force that invaded the
city. Development proceeded slowly
between then and the Civil War. City of Washington "From beyond the Navy Yard" Aquatint 1834.